Abstract
Accurate diagnosis of cases of reading disability is difficult. This should not be surprising as accurate diagnosis of just about any condition including medical conditions is difficult. For reading disability, the main source of inaccurate diagnosis is known. This knowledge provides a way to improve diagnosis. In this presentation, why accurate diagnosis of reading disability is difficult will be discussed and a Bayesian model that shows promise for improved accuracy will be presented.

About the speaker
Richard Wagner is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and the W. Russell and Eugenia Morcom Chair at Florida State University. He also is a co-founder and a current Associate Director of the Florida Center for Reading Research. He earned a Master’s Degree in School Psychology from the University of Akron. He completed his school psychology internship in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, then worked for two years as a school psychologist for the Clark County school district in Las Vegas, Nevada. He then earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Yale University in 1985. His major area of research interest is dyslexia and the normal acquisition of reading. He currently is the principal investigator of a Multidisciplinary Learning Disability Center funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). He helped the state of Arkansas develop guidelines to implement their dyslexia legislation and he recently served on the California advisory group charged with helping the California Department of Education develop guidelines in response to dyslexia legislation in that state. In addition to his research, he has coauthored tests that are commonly used in evaluating children for dyslexia and other learning disabilities including the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP-2), the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE-2), the Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension (TOSREC), and the Test of Preschool Early Literacy (TOPEL).